Back to the Barracks: Pakistan's new Army takes position

Pakistan's new Army has morphed from Musharraf's Commandos to Kayani's Corps: Seemingly apolitical, quiet and more strategic animals than tactical beasts.

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Wajahat S Khan

November 30, 1999

ISSUE DATE: May 13, 2013

UPDATED: May 8, 2013 10:26 IST

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Chief of the Pakistan Army (left)

It's boring, really. But maybe in a good way. The Pakistan Army has finally gone 'professional'. Not 'rogue'. Not 'state-within-the-state'. No, those acts are so 1999. This army doesn't do political faux pas. Not anymore.

Wajahat S. Khan

The new army is 'apolitical', 'uninvolved' and 'back-to-the-barracks'. No coups. No direct interventions. No earth-shattering statements or nerve-wracking moves that send stock exchanges tumbling and Indian strike corps deployments rumbling.

Yup, you heard it here: Officially-in public forums and talk shows-and even in semi-intimate (because no one not in uniform is ever totally 'in with the chaps') drawing rooms and cigar lounges, the army is at Pakistan's service.

Not the other way around, as history would have us believe. Cathartic? Absolutely. Inadvertent? Never.

On the frontlines, less refined captains and majors eagerly buy into the new more-soldiering-less-politicking narrative their colonels are selling hard. In effect, after 65-odd years, the transformation is supposedly complete: The Pakistan Army is less the largest political party in the country and more the fifth largest fighting force in the world.

Pakistani soldiers patrol in Sararogha town in the troubled Waziristan province

In a couple of weeks, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani will be delivering-because who else but the army can ensure them-the first civilian-to-civilian transfer-of-power elections in the country's turbulent history.

And so it would seem that Pakistan's infamously schizophrenic Democracy, Democracy-Not disorder has finally been treated by the camouflaged medics of Rawalpindi, the army's headquarters; not the sherwani and shalwar shrinks of Islamabad.

But this is not exactly a doctrinal U-turn. Something else has happened here; something bigger, something much awaited by all of us. This is a very, very complicated take-off; a long awaited flight from the narrow runway of micromanaged command-and-control politicking to big picture and broader horizon statesmanship.

Recently, near the Afghan border, I met a rare type of soldier: A boisterous isi sector commander: He was all that one can imagine a Pakistani James Bond to be: Nationalistic; tough on India; suspicious of the US; wary of the Taliban; fond of proxies; audaciously proud about crossing borders; but when we started debating democracy and governance, he spoke for all the boots around the campfire: "It's not our job. It's your job. Go do it."

And as Pakistan heads to the polls on May 11, her soldiers finally seem to have learnt to display political impartiality from whom they consider the best: Themselves.

This didn't just happen. Hammered by a new, tenacious enemy who they can't hit back at will; chained by an international finance regime that will punish them if they ever even imagine tanks rolling on Constitution Avenue; pummelled by a hyper-connected and globalised media that they shall never be able to totally control; abandoned by so many Beard Brigade partners; and perhaps, most importantly, ridiculed in the public eye for a decade of direct interventionism, hard-handed internal security debacles and over-the-top political miscalculations that eventually forced their hero and leader, Pervez Musharraf, to be disgracefully Caesared by an unapologetic and principally correct Brutus: The dynamic, even overzealous, civil institutions and society of this Islamic Republic.

So, in the ever-evolving Oz that is Pakistan, there is no one wizard, there are several. And out of that lot, none is allowed to exclusively wear khaki; almost everyone is shrouded in the conventional and well-imagined green of national consensus.

In the stability seeking short and medium run, with elections and the US/NATO pullout of Afghanistan on the cards, it's all about old-fashioned, inter-institutional constitutionalism-on the rocks, on the house, and for everyone: A drink never served much in Ye Old Bar of Pakistan.

Thus, Islamabad's famously unstable civil-military contract has a new template: The new Army is a constitutional army; and that means that the new everybody-else must do their jobs constitutionally, and as well.

From Musharraf's Commandos, the chaps have now morphed. These days, they are Kayani's Corps: Quiet; seemingly disinterested; and more strategic animals than tactical beasts. They follow polls, not headlines. They Tweet. They Whatsapp. They Hangout. They don't SMS. The public profile is low. The less-is-more regime is strictly followed. Even the indelibly inarticulate Inter Services Public Relations Directorate issues better-drafted press releases.

Meet a general and he will not just quote you Clausewitz and Machiavelli, but also Coll and Sanger. The conversation will be about NATO logistics, not Bikram Singh. The admission will be of being disciplined, not ambitious. The setting will be a well-stocked personal library, not a hotel room. He will talk polo, not politics. He will compliment your socks, not complain about your editor. And he will constantly throw in new buzzwords that are more resonant at brown-bag lunches at Harvard and Brookings than at Aabpara and Pindi: Discourse and counter-narrative; Trade ties and civil rehab; Regional military cooperation and mutually ratified de-escalation; Winning Hearts & Minds (Wham, they call it!) and sanitary operations. Not Allah Akbar [God is Great]. Not Iman, Taqwa, Jihad Feesabilliah [Faith, Piety & War in the Way of Allah]. Not even the K-word: Kashmir. Those, perhaps, are now reserved for the Mess Hall, not the Masses.

This is news: The Army has a new brand. And the brand managers are a rare new breed of soldier-spies that General Kayani has raised in his own image: Taciturn, humorous, reasonably well-read and somewhat enigmatic poker players who want to concentrate on salvaging what General Zia-ul-Haq, that charming godfather of the militant rightwing, used to say was "the only constituency in Pakistan that matters": The Army itself.

Then, of course, comes the calm, battle-hardened demeanour that can only accompany 10 years of surviving some of the toughest counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and counter-espionage operations ever known to any modern military. They might have miscalculated in 1947. They might have survived in 1965. They might have been obliterated in 1971. They might have been embarrassed in 1999. They might have been bailed out in 2002. But as for this little Af-Pak shindig, they think they've won. And they're probably right.

Regarding Afghanistan, Pakistan's army finally understands what its good at: Hunkering down. Holding ground. Not fighting, but not folding either.

On the frontlines, in parts of Waziristan, their brigades have pulled some brilliant, indigenously-inspired magic tricks to restore relative stability after years of following the misleading American 'burn baby burn' routine.

In the Game of Drones, they've adamantly held up the Washington-did-it facade. And amazingly enough, it has worked. Most critically, they realised long ago that the Americans are not fighting to win; but to pull out, gracefully. But the Pak Army is fighting to stay. It's a crucially different approach, and coupled with countering Indian moves to woo the Afghan National Security Forces, it's also allowed them to manoeuvre some elbow-room for themselves on the bargaining tables set up in Doha, Dubai, Kabul and Paris, despite the disruptions caused by incidents like Salala on the Durand Line in late 2011, the loc blowout in early 2013, or the once-every-few-weeks artillery-backed sabre rattling by the Uzbek/Tajik-dominated NDS.

They've become the dealers, letting the sharks eat each other; a remarkably more nuanced style of endgame posturing, considering here is a military with a history of being starters, not settler.

This is the new and improved militarised side of a larger political narrative where 'strategic depth' now equals to 'let me be your power broker' only if 'you let me be your military trainer', but only after 'you let me do my thing and I will let you do yours'. I call it baby-step military diplomacy. And considering that the Af-Pak-US talks in Brussels were spun by Islamabad as a part of a 'Core Group' conveniently minus India, Iran et al, it's also proof that civilian stakeholders, like the Foreign Office, are not kept out of the loop.

Finally, at home, you don't get offers you can't refuse anymore. Those days of roughing up and street corner pick-ups are long gone with the flak drawn by Saleem Shahzad. The goon is parked outside. The fund manager is here.

Now, you have more sophisticated choices. Not cash. Not junkets. Not women. But access. Clean, pure, advantageous access. And excellent, cutting edge advice that no civilian can ever help you with. Make your own portfolio, they advise. The best of us are prone to take it; the worst of us still like to sell out.

This might be shocking to many Indians. A reformed Pak Army? So soon after Mumbai? And so close to an American pullout in 2014? Impossible, says India! But New Delhi will never really understand. And I don't expect it to. The rules for that country will always be different. After all, every army needs an enemy. And the Pak Army will always have one in its greatest vanquisher: India.

Khan, a Harvard Kennedy School Fellow, is a multimedia journalist who corresponds for NBC News, Aaj TV & Radio Pakistan.